Those Crappy Apple Fonts

[Straight Vermonter]

Do we get to see what you are talking about or is it supposed to be a mystery?

[Swordmaker]

Apple vs. Windows fonts revisited... PING!

MacPing!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[SunkenCiv]

Uh, s-man, the first image is a .png, but apparently has to be viewed while on the original page. And I’d love to, but there’s no URL. :’( The other one tells me I need authorization to view it.

[Pylon]

Bush’s fault.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.macsurfer.com/redir.php?u=315017

[SunkenCiv]

Okay, now that I’ve been to the page, the images load from cache.

[Swordmaker]

Don't you see the comparison of the two page views above, one from Windows IE and the other from Mac Safari? Hmmm... loads on my Mac... let's try this:

Windows Internet Explorer default font rendering

Apple Mac Safari default font rendering

[FreedomCalls]

Here is a screen shot of that page from Neopets as seen in IE7, default fonts, Clear Type turned on:

To my eyes, it's far superior to Apple's version.

[Kozak]

[Terpfen]

Don't you see the comparison of the two page views above, one from Windows IE and the other from Mac Safari? Hmmm... loads on my Mac...

You already had the images cached, thus they loaded in your post preview.

Rule #3 when posting images to FR: use a third-party image host. Just my experience, anyway.

[Inyo-Mono]

What you are calling "fonts" are actually typefaces. A font is a version of a typeface like Times New Roman in italic.

[Steely Tom]

The lower font sample is rendered with the colored “pre-distortion” effect that Windows calls “ClearType.” If Apple has it too, good for them.

[rockrr]

Agreed. The first one is clearer/sharper. Could that be because I’m using Firefox?!

[avg_freeper]

The second example in post 8 seems much clearer than the one you posted.

[TheBattman]

I am still trying to figure out how to set the default font for Office 2008. It defaults to two of the most crappy looking fonts I have ever seen (installed with Office 2008 - you cannot keep it from being installed): Calabri and Cambria.

Both very ugly and don’t print particularly well either.

That and Word 2008 wants to automatically default to goofy spacing of 10pts. after lines.... I haven’t figured out how to turn that off either. I have to manually change it with each new document.

[HAL9000]

To my eyes, it's far superior to Apple's version.

Here they are together - it's easier to compare them this way -

Mac OS X -

Windows -

In my opinion, the Mac OS X font rendering technology does a better job on sub-pixel anti-aliasing, character spacing, kerning, ligatures and the shaping of the glyphs. The Mac OS X text looks more natural and is easier to read on the screen, like ink printed on paper.

Crappy typography is one of the main reasons why I can't tolerate Windows as my primary computer. Since I must spend several hours per day working with text on a computer screen, I'll stick with the better solution: Mac OS X.

[Petronski]

“default font rendering”

Isn’t this a bit disingenuous? You might fault Microsoft for leaving “ClearType” off by default, but to fail to mention it at all in a comparison like this would be very dishonest.

With ClearType ON, XP renders fonts beautifully...like a printed page.

[Petronski]

I’ll just add that ClearType is the ONLY reason I switched from 2000 to XP.

[Swordmaker]

Isn’t this a bit disingenuous? You might fault Microsoft for leaving “ClearType” off by default, but to fail to mention it at all in a comparison like this would be very dishonest.

That's why I added the word "default," which did not appear in the article, to my descriptions on the graphics I posted... ;^)>